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As you can probably tell from my e-mail address, I'm a Stowe diehard. I'm lucky enough to live here and ski here almost every day.
Having established my bias, but also my credentials for being able to comment on your review,
here it is:
Your "no bull" report is, unfortunately, nothing but bull. It purports to be
Stowe 2000, but we learn at the end of the review that it's December 1999.
In other words, it's a mere 13 months out of date. In case you haven't
noticed, it's been snowing like crazy (at least at Stowe) and for Christmas
2000, 10' of the natural stuff had fallen and virtually the entire mountain
was open with deep soft bases. If you can't keep your reports current, you
shouldn't be publishing them.
My response: Yes, the review is getting old. I plan to update it.
Now let's move on to a couple of other factual inaccuracies. First, that the
trail count included "all those little connectors that ski resorts love to
throw in to boost their trail count". To put it bluntly, Stowe doesn't have
many connectors to start with--the trail network is basically
top-to-bottom--and doesn't count most connectors anyway; we just ski them.
And those that we do count tend to not be "little". For example, the Cliff
Trail (connecting Perry Merrill with Nose Dive) is about a mile long, and
Rimrock (going the other way) is a half-mile long.
My response: I reported the trail count on the day I was there. If it has changed it will be updated on my next visit. Stowe may have changed its policy on counting connectors. I will check on this in the course of doing the
next review. It is an unfortunate fact that some ski areas, notably Killington, obscure the true trail count by reporting ridiculous little connectors or renaming the same trail half a dozen times as it makes its way down the
mountain.
Second, that perhaps the reason there are no lift lines on Boxing Day is the
lift ticket price. To be blunt again, it's a stupid statement. I strongly
suspect it reveals a bias on the part of your reviewer and a lack of critical
review & thinking on the publisher's part. The real reason there are no
lines on December 26th is because it's the day when people who celebrated
Christmas at home are traveling to the Vermont resorts. Duh! (And how would
I know that? Because we did it ourselves for 20 years and saw it with our
own eyes, before we moved here.)
My response: This is a subjective opinion. I think Stowe's ticket prices are way too high
Third and fourth, no expert terrain available and there never is without a
couple of good snow falls and Stowe rarely gets those before Christmas.
Well, we've spent Christmas week at Stowe for 20 years and I can recall only
a couple of occasions when there weren't at least 2 expert trails open
(Liftline & Nosedive) and usually more. Why, you ask? Because that's
Stowe's snowmaking philosophy:
open a decent network of intermediate trails
and then move on to the expert terrain to (1) give the better skiers
something to play on and (2) spread out the traffic. In addition, most years
Stowe gets its fair share of early season natural snow.
My response: I wouldn't mind if there was limited expert terrain but I expect some reflection of this in the ticket price. After all, when you buy most other services, the price is usually reduced if some of those services
are not available.
One last thing, dealing with lift ticket prices--not an inaccuracy on your
part but a matter of putting things in perspective. Nobody's trying to say
they're inexpensive. (Far from it; I marvel at how families manage to afford
it.) But Stowe's are less expensive than some of the competition and the
resort offers its guests better value for the money. Example: Winds on
Christmas day and the day after forced Stowe to close some lifts, and the
resort reduced the ticket price to the half-day rate (I think it's $44). A
couple of days later, a guest told me that one of the ski areas he had just
come from in southern Vermont continued to charge full price ($60?)
with only
one lift open. He thought Stowe treated him and his family a whole lot
better.
My response: This last paragraph seems to be an indication that Stowe is listening more these days to this kind of complaint. If this is a new policy it will be mentioned in the next review.
Let me give you some basic advice based on 30+ years of audit/investigative
experience: Check your facts, be sure of your evidence, and be sure it's
accurate & timely. I think you failed to do so and it reflects poorly on
your operation. That's why I'm copying this to a manager at Stowe Mountain
Resort.
I'd appreciate your response.
Tom Hubbs
stoweic1@aol.com
My response: Thank you for sending in your thoughts about our reviews and for giving us permission to publish them here. Debate is healthy and informative and keeps ski area management on its toes!
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